By Palestine Chronicle Staff 
Egypt warned on Sunday of “dire consequences” resulting from Israel’s plan to invade the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, Anadolu news agency reported.
The Israeli army announced its plan to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, which now shelters around 1.4 million displaced Palestinians who consider it the last safe area in Gaza.
The planned offensive has triggered widespread concerns of a humanitarian catastrophe in the city.
“Targeting Rafah, along with Israel’s continued policy of obstructing access to humanitarian aid, is an actual contribution to implementing the policy of displacing the Palestinian people and liquidating their cause,” the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Egypt said it rejects Israeli official statements about the Rafah offensive, warning that the planned onslaught “will have dire consequences, particularly in light of the risks of worsening the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.”
The ministry called for uniting all international and regional efforts to prevent the planned attack on Rafah.
The Israeli army on Sunday approved a plan for a ground offensive in Rafah, according to the Israeli public broadcaster KAN.
On Wednesday, the White House warned that an Israeli offensive in Rafah “would be a disaster” for Palestinians.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,340 Palestinians have been killed, and 67,984 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Moreover, at least 8,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all of the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
(PC, AA)
